The Alibaba Firm’s Industrial Marketing Plan

Topics: Alibaba, Marketing Words: 1745 Pages: 6

Industrial marketing promotes products and solutions to other businesses, as opposed to individual consumers, and focuses on selling material and manufacturing constituents. Alibaba is a B2B online platform that fulfills the requirement of vendors and purchasers. The webpage’s main demographic is always another corporation or its personnel. Alibaba provides a reselling foundation for small consumers seeking rapid consignments of small quantities of products on its global website. In addition, it provides China-based enterprises with enterprise applications and network infrastructure offerings. Industrial marketing encompasses two marketing functions: manufacturing enterprise advertising, establishing the corporation’s public reputation, and ramping up its profitability and B2B market presence (Krings et al., 2021). Therefore, a well-defined production marketing framework can help Alibaba distinguish itself from rivals and grow more quickly.

Branding

Locations

Important segmentation types include places, as not every business can cover the globe. Therefore, Alibaba must consider where it can function and offer its items and solutions, as it is sometimes able to secure a deal with a client who is located too far from its operations or in a state it cannot serve due to legal or tax issues (Tóth et al., 2022). The three selection criteria for locations can be predicated on the continent, nation, and city, as listed below. Alibaba Group is one of the world’s biggest internet electronic operations and business communities, operating domestically in China. It is the largest internet brand in China and the second-best online organization worldwide.

Niche and Markets

Alibaba achieves maximum return on investment by understanding which markets it wishes to enter and which niches its offerings could fill. B2B consumers want the content to attract their specialty and market. Consequently, segmenting its core demographic into niches and marketplaces will aid in determining its communication and other promotional material so that it can be further customized. The four criterion for Alibaba’s client base of e-commerce systems includes B2C (Tmall.com, Juhuasuan.com), C2C (Taobao.com), and B2B (Alibaba.com) channels, as well as tour operators (Alitrip) (Zhang-Zhang et al., 20200. The above-mentioned three selection criteria have their activities catered for by Alibaba.

Pricing

Marketing Objectives and Ansoff’s Matrix

Due to its emphasis on expansion, the Ansoff Framework is one of the most commonly applied marketing models. It is used to assess incentives for entrepreneurs to boost revenue by displaying alternative marketplace configurations (Verhoef et al., 2021). As per the modification of Ansoff’s Matrix, the following strategic goals will guide Alibaba Group towards business expansion and challenging product offerings. First, to enhance Alibaba’s participation in the mega-markets, such as cloud applications, amusement, online payments, and cellular internet for e-commerce businesses. Second, to innovate new products, possibly utilizing more cost-effective producers with enhanced performance and labeling. The final objective is to evaluate the company’s expertise and specialized know-how to facilitate it to enter a new market with novel product offerings by utilizing its entrepreneurial skills and improving profitability.

Digital techniques can improve the first objective by facilitating electronic, quicker, and more precise strategic planning and reduced cost. Additionally, expertise advances are reshaping item production; therefore, modern technologies, such as those provided by Alibaba, make it possible to view bids, offers, and payments instantaneously (Olson et al., 2021). Emerging innovations can increase Alibaba’s profitability and reduce the time required to compile the data embedded in agreements, thereby eliminating the need for rewriting (Cui et al., 2020). Moreover, the digitalization method transforms statistics into market intelligence, allowing companies to react to considerable alterations in real-time and reduce operational risk.

Tactics

Product

Under this measurement, the appropriate strategy would be to add value to the current brands and attain divergence via assurances, warranties, after-sales or online help, a user-friendly platform, or electronic material such as a video that assists the user in maximizing the product’s potential (Lim, 2021). The task is to develop the appropriate unique mix of value to fulfill this need, and as buyer needs alter, rivals race ahead or new possibilities present themselves. This corresponds to what the brand manufactures, whether a product, an offering, or a mixture of the two designed to fulfill the user’s essential requirements.

Prices

To entice clients, relatively low prices will be set for commodities. This is the only revenue-generating component of the promotion mix; all other actions incur expenses. Therefore, setting the correct price to cover expenses and increase profitability is essential. Before price determination, businesses must conduct experiments on what shoppers are ready to pay and obtain an insight into the item’s market needs.

Place

The strategy that will be implemented under this element is a global expansion of the digital platform. This is where consumers make their purchases and could occur in a retail store, via a smartphone, or online. Some companies have the physical environment or internet presence to take their item or brand directly to the client (Hutt and Speh, 2021). In contrast, others must rely on intermediaries with the regions, storage capacity, and sales knowledge to assist with dissemination.

Promotion

Since the company conducts most of its business online, the strategy for this component is social media marketing. The goal of advertising in the promotion mix is to communicate messages to customers, regardless of where they are in the purchase process, to garner understanding, involvement, eagerness, or intervention. There are various information instruments with varying advantages. Personal selling utilizing a sales team is superior to marketing for establishing connections with consumers and closing deals.

People

To provide improved services to its customers, the suggested technique is to provide information and instruction on consumer relationship management to its employees. When engaging with clients, a corporation’s employees take and process their inquiries, requests, and concerns in person via webchat, social networking sites, and the contact center. Their understanding of the organization’s products and offerings and how to utilize them, their exposure to pertinent details, and their daily methodology and mindset must be improved.

Process

To accomplish this, the company would incorporate an automated customer service invention to aid customer service representatives in order fulfillment and requests through the company’s web portal. Without the proper behind-the-scenes mechanisms, a company cannot deliver a consistent, productive, and customer-friendly adventure. Recognizing the measures of the customer lifecycle, from making an online inquiry to seeking content and making a purchase, enables businesses to determine which procedures must be designed to guarantee an optimistic experience for the user.

Physical Evidence

Preserving its distinctive logo and consistently recognizing itself by it would be the strategy for this aspect of the marketing mix. Physical proof includes sufficient indicators of the experience quality an organization delivers. It can be incredibly beneficial when a purchaser has never purchased from the company before and requires affirmation or payment is required before service delivery. The website contains an important material proof for Alibaba, including firsthand accounts and case studies.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Tactic	Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Making contributions to established brands and achieving differentiation through promises, guarantees, after-sales or online help, a consumer-friendly interface, or digital content such as a webcast.	Perceptions and cumulative time spent viewing.
Selling at relatively low prices.	Total sales made at the set price.
Expansion of the internet platform worldwide.	Impressions, click-through rate, and cost-per-action (CPA).
Social media marketing.	Consumer follower counts, reach or intuitions, and connection rate.
Education and Training on CRM techniques	Consumer response on quality of service offered by customer care centers.
Automated telephone innovation to assist call center staff with customer orders and demands through the organization’s website.	Overall traffic, bounce rate, new clients, repeat shoppers, time on site, traffic sources, and conversions (Ghahremani-Nahr and Nozari, 2021).
Preserving its distinctive logo and consistently recognizing itself by it.	Quality Score, testimonials, Net Promoter Score, and repetitive monthly income (Kardaras et al.,2019).

Schedule

Tactic	Activity
	What Needs to be Done	When it Needs to be Done
Making contributions to established brands and achieving differentiation through promises, guarantees, after-sales or online help, a consumer-friendly interface, or digital content such as a webcast.	Recognizing and conveying a brand’s or service’s distinguishing features while showcasing the commodity’s or firm’s distinctions from its contenders. In addition, Alibaba must establish a unique selling proposition for a good or service to appeal to a customer base or audience.	When the company launches a new product, Alibaba must constantly advertise it to its buyers through its various platforms. However, for existing goods, daily and consistent promotion would seem appropriate.
Selling at relatively low prices.	To determine the cheap prices, Alibaba must calculate the total cost of introducing the goods to consumers and add profitability to that total. This strategy is known as cost-plus pricing, and it is one of the most straightforward methods for establishing relatively low prices.	At the introduction of a new product into the market should take the first three months.
Expansion of the internet platform worldwide.	Marketing Alibaba business 24/7 to enable customers access it, gain knowledge about the firm, interact with the business, and contact the enterprise whenever it is convenient for them, regardless of where they are in the customer lifecycle or what gadget they are utilizing.	Marketing the firm needs to be done more often during the company’s initial setup. Basically, the first six months should involve continuous advertisement.
Social media marketing.	Not forgetting that online networking is primarily a medium for connecting and servicing, the most significant activity would be aggressively connecting with clients, meeting their requests, and addressing their grievances. In addition, the company will monitor what clients say about the company, its customer support attitude, and its products on media platforms.	This activity must be performed when the company advertises its goods and wants to reach a bigger audience.
Education and Training on CRM techniques.	Develop employee programs focusing on CRM techniques to boost personnel knowledge of the current CRM methodologies.	When the company realizes inefficiencies in its CRM and poor feedback regarding its online support.
Automated telephone innovation to assist call center staff with customer orders and demands through the organization’s website.	Alibaba needs to invest heavily in its research and development department to develop novel innovations regarding automatic online support services.	Where the number of orders and inquiries is extensive, and the human personnel cannot handle them satisfactorily.
Preserving its distinctive logo and consistently recognizing itself by it.	Constantly appealing to its consumer base to familiarize themselves with its company logo to avoid fraudulent dealers. Advertisement on the original and fake logos of the same should be carried out.	Where consumers report numerous cases of con activities by persons or institutions claiming to be Alibaba.

Reference List

Cui, R., Li, M. and Li, Q. (2020) ‘Value of high-quality logistics: Evidence from a clash between SF Express and Alibaba.’ Management Science, 66(9), pp.3879-3902.

Ghahremani-Nahr, J. and Nozari, H. (2021) ‘A survey for investigating key performance indicators in digital marketing.’ International Journal of Innovation in Marketing Elements, 1(1), pp.1-6. Web.

Hutt, M.D. and Speh, T.W. (2021) Business marketing management: B2B. South-Western, Cengage Learning.

Kardaras, et al. (2019) ‘A framework for analyzing the impact of data analytics and the internet of things on digital marketing.’ In Techno-Social Systems for Modern Economical and Governmental Infrastructures (pp. 211-240). IGI Global.

Krings, W., Palmer, R. and Inversini, A. (2021) ‘Industrial marketing management digital media optimization for B2B marketing.’ Industrial Marketing Management, 93, pp.174-186.

Lim, W.M. (2021) ‘A marketing mix typology for integrated care: The 10 Ps.’ Journal of Strategic Marketing, 29(5), pp.453-469.

Olson, et al. (2021) ‘Business strategy and the management of digital marketing.’ Business Horizons, 64(2), pp.285-293.

Tóth, et al. (2022) ‘B2B eWOM on Alibaba: Signaling through online reviews in platform-based social exchange.’ Industrial Marketing Management, 104, pp.226-240.

Verhoef, et al. (2021) ‘Digital transformation: A multidisciplinary reflection and research agenda.’ Journal of Business Research, 122, pp.889-901.

Zhang-Zhang, Y., Rohlfer, S. and Rajasekera, J. (2020) ‘An eco-systematic view of cross-sector fintech: The case of Alibaba and Tencent.’ Sustainability, 12(21), p.1-24.